Can the Government approve and send to the Cortes a State Budget bill without parliamentary approval of the deficit target? Yes. That is the position argued by the State Attorney in a legal brief that disputes the Popular Party’s plan to block budget processing after the Senate, where the PP holds a solid majority, again rejected the deficit and debt targets for 2024-2026 proposed by the Government.
“The rejection of stability goals by any chamber does not affect the Government’s obligation to present a General State Budget Bill, since that duty is enshrined directly in the Constitution (Article 134.1),” the State Attorney’s report states, a document that has been cited by a Spanish news source.
“The Government’s obligation to present to the Cortes a General State Budget Bill cannot be bypassed by events deriving from a lower-ranking legal provision than the Constitution, such as the Budget Stability Organic Law,” the brief contends.
“We will present a Budget project”
The first deputy prime minister and minister of Finance had been alluding since December to this legal opinion. Though the document’s existence had been questioned publicly due to the Senate blocking the deficit and debt targets, it finally came to light on the latest Senate session.
With the backing of the State Attorney’s analysis, the government reiterated its plan to push a 2024 Budget bill to the Cortes, despite substantial delays in processing that should have concluded before the end of last year. The government leader stated in the Senate that the Budget for 2024 will be submitted to the General Courts.
Validity of the Stability Plan
The State Attorney argues that “if the deficit targets were approved, the Budget project must comply with those targets. If not approved, the project must adhere to the applicable legislation.” This explanation reflects the constitutional framework that governs budgetary planning and stability rules.
It adds that “in the event that the new stability target is rejected, the Government can present a General State Budget Bill in line with the last approved stability targets.” Currently, this means the budget must be prepared according to the stability goals contained in the program, provided those goals were endorsed by the European Commission and the European Council as they were in May and July of the previous year.
“The State Administration will fulfill the constitutional mandate by drafting a General State Budget Bill aligned with the stability and public debt goals in the stability program,” the document submitted to the Budget Secretary states.
The statement refers to the document titled “Update of the 2023-2026 Stability Program,” sent to the European Commission at the end of April, in which the Government set a deficit target for 2024 of 3% of GDP for all public administrations combined.
The stability plan also distributed this 3% deficit target across different levels of government, assigning 3% to the State, 0.2% to Social Security, with regional administrations forecast to balance (deficit zero) and local corporations to post a 0.2% surplus.
However, in the deficit targets trajectory now rejected by the Senate, the Government had redistributed that single 3% target to give more spending room to autonomous communities (a deficit of 0.1%, instead of balance) and to local authorities (instead of a surplus, they would have to present a zero deficit in 2024).
But the Senate definitively blocked this new path with the majority of the PP in the upper chamber. According to the State Attorney’s opinion, the April path is back in play, effectively limiting spending capacity for autonomous communities by about 1.5 billion euros and for municipalities by around 3 billion euros. In Catalonia, the Government is expected to lose approximately 277 million euros of spending capacity in 2024, now bound by a zero-deficit target. Andalusia would need to reduce its 2024 budget by about 195 million. All autonomous communities would have to adjust their accounts proportionally (one-tenth of GDP). Municipalities would also need to adjust under the new targets.